Looking for suggestions on educational websites

With so many websites available online and loads of apps, I am a bit confused which ones are the best and how to make the most of it. Right now I am sending my daughter to a coaching institute and she has been going there for 2-3 months and to be honest, I am not very happy. They keep giving her sheets each week but dont explain how they are supposed to be done. I teach her and dont want to keep spending awful lot of money on it and she is gradually losing interest doing the same stuff again and again. Has anyone else been in the same situation. She is in KS1 now and is one of the bright students in her class.

For us the issue was finding support in maths. We opted for Mathsfactor - it marks the work for the child & you can check results. It keeps you posted (either by e-mail or you can just log in to your parent dashboard) and see how your child is doing, explanation of what is coming next, preview of lessons, etc....

Try to make time to listen to them read a few nights a week and if you can try and give them a break and read to them now and then. We have a nice mix of DDs reading to us (whilst one or the other is having their bath) and us reading to DDs (usually at weekends) from books we enjoyed as children.

Writing is trickier but solutions are there:

Thank you cards (for presents/ nice days out/ etc...)Post cards on tripsletters to competitions rather than e-mails

we also encourage fan letters - to favourite authors or tv shows/ personalities.

Both DDs keep diaries as well. I think it is a way to 'vent' about each other, me & DH - but also to work through issues at school they feel less comfortable talking to us about (there's a lot of low-level bullying at our school).

My personal feeling is that if you encourage reading of good quality children's fiction & keep maths ticking over - you'll be going a long way to helping your child long term.

Our school has had some huge issues with regular delivery of homework, especially in maths. So we've found doing 1 hour - 1 1/2 hours of extra maths a week was a huge help - but DD1 scored NC L1 (below expected progress) at KS1 SATs so we were doing a lot of remedial work in Year 3 - by Year 4 it was such a part of our 'routine' - doing a bit of maths whilst I was making dinner/ cleaning just became the norm.

Mathletics is a great site. There are loads of interactive games with examples and a teaching section to show how etc. You can also play live against others. When I used it tree was no chat facility or anything so the live games were safe for children - I used it within a school setting where esafety was very important

for practice that doesn't feel like it - try free download of Timez Attack - two platforms: dungeon and castle - you are an ogre travelling through either dungeon/ castle solving multiplication problems. It quizes you at the outset and starts with where you're at. Every 3 or 4 problems a medium sized ogre comes out and quizzes you and after a few of these the giant ogre comes out and reviews everything you've been doing. The multiplication problems are shown as both vertical formal numeric problems and multiple additions. Link here: www.bigbrainz.com/. (They also have inverse multiplication facts game - 'division' - i.e. 36 divided by 9 = ?) so you can move onto that once you've mastered times tables.

There's also tons of maths apps out there:

here's a few ideas - mostly for apple products I fear: www.apps4primaryschools.co.uk/apps/ks2/maths/ or [[ http://www.teachthought.com/apps-2/12-of-the-best-math-ipad-apps-of-2012/]] - but check them out - some have android versions now.